So there I was, doing my own thing in the low-sec region of "Rockpool". Mostly, this is the occasional Agent II mission, when I had time to play at all, being the multi-game hopper that I am. The vague overall plan here is to increase my standing with the local agent to the point where I can mission grind on IIIs and even IVs, and yet still be on hand if I'm needed.
The whole 'needed' thing is turning out to be somewhat optimistic actually, and it seems most of the corp I'm in spends much of their EVE time (presumably) watching TV, and/or playing XBox, while waiting for their Strip Miners to complete the cycle. Either that, or they're busy half a galaxy away, doing what I am, which is basically, soloing combat Agent Missions for personal profit and gain.
Domestic felicity, all round, which is nice and all, but we are actually operating in low-sec for much of the time, so it shouldn't have been quite the surprise that it was, when some of our haulers started going missing. The corp runs several of the POS structures in the region, and these things need constant supply - a lot like being a hauler on a mining op, but with the crucial difference that a POS won't ever get bored and call a halt to the endless racing about in a Badger MkII.
I'd been away for a few weeks and the first thing I saw when I got back was one of the Hauling Folks, (whom I have as much respect for as the Mining Folks - both vital chores that I'm glad I don't have to do), grumbling in Corp Chat about the loss. Information was somewhat sketchy (always a bad sign), but enough umbrage was raised to cause a modest posse to form, in some half-hearted attempt at revenge.
Turns out that one of the many other corporations and alliances in the region which we had, for some reason, set as 'Blue', had gotten bored or something and just decided to go on a bit of a spree, and had come across one of our lot lumbering their way to the POS system in an Industrial. Considering their bored guy was in a Battlecruiser, things went about as badly as you might expect. I don't know the details exactly, but it seems the BC managed to jump on the Industrial at a gate, despite the supposed defensive assistance of the sentry guns and billboard. I personally suspect Autopilot AFK, but couldn't say for sure.
Living in Low-Sec, it's probably quite important not to let that sort of thing go unpunished - once everyone else out there gets to hear about it, things probably get quite ugly quite quickly - blood in the water and all that.
So we dithered for quite a while, and eventually got a small gang together with the intention of going after the chap and giving him a good seeing too. Much of the dithering was spent getting the few people who were available down to the system in question, a tedious process involving jump clone timers. I happened to be next door, which was just as well, as I'm still about 3.0 faction short of a jump clone with anyone, after nearly five years of play. Slacker!
We finally assembled - a Hurricane (Me), another Battlecruiser, and a Battleship. It all seemed a bit of a hastily thrown together ensemble, with me having the only tackling fit, and none of us that well tanked for sentry gun fire, which seemed to be the plan.
Our quarry had been spotted in system, and the three of us split up to cover each of the gates out. Then the waiting. The enemy flashed me at my gate, flying a shuttle which was too small for me to lock on to before he could disappear, back into the system, rather than out past me.
Shortly afterward, he buzzed the other two gates in turn, then presumably docked. By now of course, he'd pretty much sussed us out and was busy fitting up a more suitable ship to have some 'fun' with us in, and was most likely also calling in corp-mate reinforcements. The longer we waited, the faster I could feel the situation slipping out of our control...
Sure enough, before long, he was spotted at one of the other gates, this time in a Battleship, and we were ordered to warp in and have at it. Not a straightforward assault, mind you, as we were not at war at all, and this was a 0.4 Sec system, meaning that us attacking him, made us pirates, criminals and worse, incurring a -0.5% personal security status hit each, (Which will take me weeks to work off), and more importantly, causing the sentry guns to open fire, much to the amusement of our nemesis, I'm sure.
Quite an education - the Sentry guns hit pretty damned hard, but it is possible to survive their withering hail for a few minutes in a decently set up BC or BS - longer too, if you throw out five drones each, as the guns randomly alternate targets, and that includes the fast moving and difficult to hit drones too.
So we got to work on the enemy Battleship, whittling away it's shield and starting to dent it's armour a bit. I managed to get my one point of warp scramble on him, which made me feel dead chuffed and like a real eve player and everything, and in the somewhat hectic confusion of it all, I don't think any of us had noticed that he hadn't actually fired back at all. We managed to get him down to perhaps two-thirds armour, and then he just casually hit 'Jump' and vanished to the next door system; afterall, he was a law-abiding citizen who hadn't engaged in combat at all. We on the otherhand, were all flagged as the worst kind of blackguards, and so were not allowed to use the jumpgate ourselves - aggression timers and whatnot.
Which just left us all sitting there, feeling foolish, annoyed and oh yes, being beaten to near-death by the sentry guns, and our nemesis's corp-mate, who'd shown up at 100km in some kind of sniping Cruiser to start taking potshots at us. Time for an orderly withdrawal!
I spent the next fifteen minutes warping about the planets, waiting for my status as evil pirate to expire, so I can be allowed to dock and not get shot at by the sentry guns again. The other two members of our Taskforce of Awesome were similarly engaged, when not responding to the exultant gleeful smacktalk that our enemy had quite rightly earned.
Embarrassing and quite disheartening all in all, although on the plus side, I didn't lose my ship - my cowardice kicking long before that became a problem. Still, 3 vs 1, and we still ended up with a draw. Seems I have an awful lot to learn, and every step of the evening saw us basically toyed with by a foe who knew much better how to play the system to his own ends. If just one of us had gone after him, he'd have polished us off without breaking a sweat, but since there were three of us, he used the game's mechanics faultlessly to beat us that way.
Unless actually involved in a proper War, or operating out in true lawless 0.0 space, it seems to me to be a much easier game of it being the wolf, the preemptive ambush aggressor. Call it 'Pirate' if you will, I think they're just bored. Not sure I could bring myself to do it mind you - roll up a Rifter-flying newbie and start jumping on miners. But making the opening move like that, calling the shots, dictating the place and numbers of a fight, and simply fleeing if it looks like you won't win...it all makes sense, and is a hard thing to react against - fighting on someone else's terms and all. I think I'd prefer an outright War - at least you don't have to dance around gate guns or grind sec status points to recover.
It was all made much harder by how little enthusiasm there was among our lot to put up any kind of counter-attack, (Three pilots willing and able to muster, out of a corp membership of 70-odd, and an Alliance of many more) and how difficult and time-consuming such a counter-attack was to arrange and coordinate, with the other two far enough away to necessitate using a jump clone.
I wonder what our corp is actually doing in Low Sec sometimes. There are POS opportunities, certainly, but they can't be that good, and on the whole, it looks as if our corp manages to exist in Rockpool purely because no-one else out there has really noticed us yet. Keep up with these slapstick defensive actions, and that's sure to change, and I dread to think what will happen when some other rival out there really wants us gone.
Before that day comes, we need to be a lot more numerous, a lot more active, a lot less scattered and a lot more willing, or we're all going to find ourselves a lot more Empire Based...